Civil Quotations | Page 2

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War.

Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that.

Many civil rights came about, not when they were passed into law, but because the federal government did what it should and saw them enforced.

This country has a proud history of opening its doors to generations of people fleeing personal persecution, civil unrest and war.

My mother saw nothing inconsistent in her traditional desire to look after her husband and children and her radical politics. She began her civil rights work before most people had ever heard the word 'feminism,' and in those early years, she was focused on racial justice.

We need a mobilized and active civil society using its purchasing power to demand sustainable products and practices. It is also essential that governments commit to the future, creating fiscal and regulatory conditions for sustainable policies to thrive.

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'

The Society of American Civil Engineers, someone who's going to come in and say to the public, we've looked at, we've examined, we've reviewed the repairs and we think they're strong enough to withstand the type of hurricane that - that could hit the city this season.

Only in South Africa could you have a change in government without civil war. If there wasn't the depth of love and caring among our people, this would not have happened.

Civil movements and riots are as old as human civilization. Long before Twitter was created, mobilization of the discontented was mouth-to-mouth, or even by 'smoke signals' to gather the uprising against established political power.

The resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder is met with both pride and disappointment by the Civil Rights community. We are proud that he has been the best Attorney General on Civil Rights in U.S. history and disappointed because he leaves at a critical time when we need his continued diligence most.

People willy-nilly borrow for consumption. Civil servants willy-nilly borrow for consumption and then wonder why they don't have enough money at the end of the month.

Today, Church policy in Ireland is to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. It recognises the Gardai and H.S.E. as those with responsibility for investigating such allegations and that any Church investigation should not take place until the investigation by the civil authorities has been completed.

After the Spanish Civil War against Franco, a group of us got together: a group of well-to-do people who were sympathetic to the lost cause of a Republican state. We bought a convent in Toulouse and converted it into a hospital run by the Unitarians. It took care of the Spanish refugees who fled to Toulouse.

In the time when my mother began standing up against prejudice and racism, the vast majority of white Americans rarely thought about civil rights.

From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession.

But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.

The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography.

Egypt now is a real civil state. It is not theocratic, it is not military. It is democratic, free, constitutional, lawful and modern.

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.

I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It's because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand - demand - demand change.

The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.

In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens' privacy and civil liberties are also protected.

In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. I had never lived anywhere but Philly, and you can imagine the culture shock; the Civil War seeps into daily life and conversation down South in a way it never does up North.

If you cut down the forest, you know what happens: The whole of Asia turns into a desert. Without water, you're talking civil unrest, war, mud slides - the whole bloody lot.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.

By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ.

Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of their loved ones were gone and many of their loved ones, they hoped, were in this other realm called Heaven.

I explained to the president that I've been pleased with my conversations with the Attorney General and Civil Rights Division regarding their helpful understanding that they aren't taking over this investigation, but are conducting a parallel review of the events that led to Michael Brown's death.

I support the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

I think, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks will go down as one of the two most well-known and remembered figures out of the Civil Rights Movement.

My mom was a history teacher, so I couldn't really avoid history when I was growing up. But we're very light on American history. We don't really have great opportunities to study both the Civil War and the Revolution.

For a long time I thought I should be a civil engineer. That seemed to be the only thing worth doing, and I chose the wrong subjects at A-level. I read all the sciences to start with, and then had to admit, 'This isn't what I want to do' and changed course.

The Obama years will be remembered as a cultural - and legal - tipping point for equality for all people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual, arguably the civil rights movement of our times. The president signed the bill repealing 'don't ask, don't tell.' The Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.

We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great, great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist.

Too often, advances in civil rights or women's rights are undermined by wrong-headed legislation or weak-kneed political leadership.

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Its enactment, following the longest continuous debate in the history of the U.S. Senate, enshrined into law the basic principle upon which our country was founded - that all people are created equal.

Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people.

Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.

Particularly black Americans, many of them, from quotes that I have seen and conversations I've had, are sort of insulted that the civil rights movement is being hijacked - the rhetoric of the civil rights movement is being hijacked for something like same sex marriage. Black Americans tend to have a higher degree of religiosity.

I don't have to come back politically, but I would like to do something that will help the people of Thailand. There must be a process under which I can come back. I want to come back to clear the chaos in Thailand, the civil war in Thailand.

Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.

When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.

At a purely practical level, history is important because it provides the basic skills needed for students to go further in sociology, politics, international relations and economics. History is also an ideal discipline for almost all careers in the law, the civil service and the private sector.

As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.

We increasingly live in societies based on the vocabulary of 'choice' and a denial of reality - a denial of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands, and a growing machinery of social and civil death.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

In the view of some people, you can only believe in civil rights if you work as a civil rights lawyer. I just don't buy that.

I think young people don't really know that much about the Civil Rights Movement and about the history of African Americans in this country. It's not taught enough in school.

I had very little exposure to business growing up. I also was very focused on the Civil Rights Movement. And I saw law as a vehicle to really bring about substantial change.

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.

I do know that you have to choose between the logic of reconciliation and the logic of justice. Pure justice leads to new civil war. I prefer the negotiable revolution.

I am actually one of those who took President Obama at his word when he first ran - that he would get us out of ill-advised wars, that he would do something about health care costs, and that he would protect civil liberties. Like many Americans, I was disappointed.

When you have warfare, things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war.

No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

Gays and lesbians began to gain civil rights when Americans realized that their brothers, cousins, daughters were gay.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.

Now that it's officially summer, here's my advice to parents who want to continue teaching their kids during the next two months and learn something themselves: visit Civil War battlefields.

Michael Jackson is an accidental civil rights leader - an accidental pioneer. He broke ground and barriers in so many different realms in artistry, in pictures, in movies, in music, you name it.

'Twilight' fans are different. They're very civil with one another. It's a respect because they're all in this together and they all appreciate the same things.

I was a chief justice. And before that, I was a district court judge, handled major felonies, including capital murder cases; and I handled major civil litigation.

People don't think about the fact that when Barack Obama's parents had him - it was illegal for them to be married in several states in this country. So if we start making it okay that certain people can marry and other people can't, it's a slippery slope of civil rights. Who knows who is going to be allowed to marry or not marry next.

With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.

The rights of women are to the 21st century what civil rights were to the 20th.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together.

We must erase bin Laden's ugly legacy, not extend it: by ending the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties, we can protect the freedoms that make America worth fighting for.

School-leavers unfortunately will come away thinking the First World War consisted simply of 'going over the top' on the Western Front to slaughter in no-man's-land, when the conflict extended so much further, to the collapse of four empires and numerous civil wars.

After Civil Rights, it was very awkward for whites and blacks. We didn't know how to talk to each other.

Building sustainable cities - and a sustainable future - will need open dialogue among all branches of national, regional and local government. And it will need the engagement of all stakeholders - including the private sector and civil society, and especially the poor and marginalized.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

I feel happy that twenty-five years of vicissitudes in my fortune, and firmness in my principles, warrant me in repeating here that if, to recover her rights, it is sufficient for a nation to resolve to do so, she can preserve them only by rigid fidelity to her civil and moral duties.

You know what Americans are really sensitive to? Issues of fairness. I think this is a modern phenomenon, born of the civil rights movement. Once you convince Americans that something is basically unfair, you've got a winning cause.

We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.

The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.

I'm listing to music all the time. I have favorite artists. Kid Rock loves the Civil Wars' song 'Barton Hollow.' We both said that's our favorite country song of the year. That knocks me out.

Using a broad brushstroke, I think Libertarian - most of America are socially accepting and fiscally responsible. I'm in that category. I think, broadly speaking, that's a Libertarian. A Libertarian is going to be somebody who's really strong on civil liberties.

We're not going to baby sit a civil war.

Women hold up more than half the sky and represent much of the world's unrealized potential. They are the educators. They raise the children. They hold families together and increasingly drive economies. They are natural leaders. We need their full engagement... in government, business and civil society.

It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty all over the globe, and especially over this continent - even by force, if necessary. It is a sad delusion.

I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.

It was clear to me as a civil rights leader in the '60s that unless we put the social and economic underpinnings beneath the political and the civil rights, we wouldn't go anywhere.

When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights.

Providing all Latin-American children with the education and early childhood development that they need is in the best interest of all, so it has to be a priority for all of us, not only the government and civil society, but also the business sector.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection - without pretending that access itself is such a right.

Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.

By the 1960s, many of us believed that the Civil Rights Movement could eliminate racism in America during our lifetime. But despite significant progress, racism remains.

School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

When people discuss the 1960s and the great Civil Rights Era, they often speak in romantic terms as if there wasn't immense work put in, and as if there wasn't immense sacrifice that took place. But none of those battles were easily fought and won; there were sustained movements behind them.

I support gay unions. I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely - leave marriages to the churches. And grant civil unions to gay couples, grant civil unions to a man and woman.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry 'Native passes' issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Obama when it comes to civil liberties, and I'm going to make the claim that I'm stronger than Romney when it comes to dollars and cents.

Inflicting emotional distress has typically been treated as a civil action. How 'substantial' does the distress have to be for it to turn criminal?

One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.

Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.

One of the main lessons I have learned the last five years as Secretary-General is that the United Nations cannot function properly without the support of the business community and civil society. We need to have tripartite support - the governments, the business communities and the civil society.

I don't think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

The most memorable interviews for me are folks whose names I don't know: young civil rights leaders in the South, showing great courage as they walked into a town in the dark of night. A doctor working for 'Doctors Without Borders' in Somalia, operating by kerosene light in a tent. Those are the kinds of people that linger in your memory.